By the end of the 1980s, many Americans looked at the state of the nation with a renewed optimism, which was personified by an enduring American president - Ronald Wilson Reagan. The essays in this volume revisit the 1980s in order to examine the factors that contributed to his political and cultural triumphs and assess his legacy.

"The essays in this splendid collection offer a nuanced, up-to-date understanding not only of Ronald Reagan but also of larger social, economic, and political trends of the 1980s - and of their legacies." - James T. Patterson, author of Restless Giant: The United States from Watergate to Bush v. Gore

Autorentext

CHERYL HUDSON is an Associate Research Fellow at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, UK.

GARETH DAVIES is University Lecturer in American History at St. Anne's College, University of Oxford, UK.

Inhalt
Introduction; C.Hudson& G. Davies PART I: PERCEPTIONS Ronald Reagan: Communicating the America Within; D.Rather Only an Actor: Memories of a Reagan Biopic; G.Hodgson 'Just Say No': Drug Abuse Policy in the Reagan Administration; P.G.Bourne Ronald Reagan and the End of the Cold War; J.F.Matlock, Jr. PART II: POLITICS AND POLICIES Reagan, Nuclear Weapons, and the End of the Cold War; S.Head Reaganomics and its Legacy; I.Morgan African American Protest during the Reagan Years: Forging New Agendas, Defending Old Victories; S.Tuck Reagan's Religious Right: The Unlikely Alliance between Southern Evangelicals and a California Conservative; D.K.Williams Ronald Reagan and the Republican Party: Responses to Realignment; R.Mason PART III: LEGACIES The Baptist and the Messiah: Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher; D.Sandbrook Transforming the Presidency: The Administration of Ronald Reagan; J.D.Aberbach The Road to Mount Rushmore: The Conservative Commemoration Crusade for Ronald Reagan; N.Bjerre-Poulsen Toward a Historiography of Reagan and the 1980s: Why Have We Done Such a Lousy Job?; G.Troy Epilogue: Ronald Reagan and the Historians; M.J.Heale